Part II of this guide to starting a blog with WordPress will cover the wonderful world of WordPress plugins – plugins are blogger candy!
WordPress plugins are add-ons for WordPress that plug into the core WordPress application and add extended functionality for blogs. What each plugin has in common is that they add to the power of the WordPress platform by either replacing or adding features. This is functionality is similar to the “apps” which can be uploaded on iPhones and Android phones.
There are a few core plugins which are developed by WordPress but most are written by third party developers. Many of these plugins are offered for free – with the original developer asking for small donations – and some more advanced ones are paid or premium plugins. The WordPress team does a great job of maintaining a list of nearly 11,000 plugins and each plugin is ranked or rated based on the community’s feedback.
10 Essential WordPress plugins for new bloggers
All of the plugin links below go to their respective WordPress download pages. However, if you already have a WordPress blog then the easiest way to get these plugins installed is to search for them in the plugin database from your user interface. See below.
- Akismet – is a great comment spam plugin. This one comes highly recommended.
- All in One SEO Pack – is a plugin that helps to optimize a blog for search engines. It gives easy ways to set up title tags, descriptions, keywords and a variety of other settings that have an impact upon SEO.
- Contact Form 7 –is a powerful contact form plugin which is simple yet very flexible. It allows you to flexibly design the form and mail. You can even manage multiple contact forms as well.
- Google XML Sitemaps – is a plugin to help Google and other search engines to find every page and post on your blog – good for getting a new blog indexed quickly.
- CommentLuv – is a great plugin that allows people who take the time to comment on your blog to leave a link back to their latest blog post. This is a great way to show appreciation to your readers and encourage them to leave comments.
- Digg Digg – is an all-in-one plugin that integrates popular social vote buttons easily on your blog. There are dozens of social media-related plugins available but Digg Digg is perhaps the most flexible and dynamic, and currently includes 19 different social sites such as Twitter, Facebook (like and share!), Digg (of course), Stumbleupon, Delicious, and more. I use this plugin and have been a happy camper ever since.
- Subscribe To Comments – is a WordPress plugin that allows those leaving comments to check a box and be notified when other people leave a comment on that thread.
- W3 Total Cache – is a plugin that helps to speed up the load time of your blog’s pages. Waiting for a pages to load can be annoying for visitors and will often times move on to another website as a result. Don’t let slow load times negatively impact your readership.
- Broken Link Checker – is a great plugin that scans your blog for broken links. Nothing is more annoying than clicking on a link that sends me to the dreaded ’404 error page’. This plugin will help you to prevent your readers from this same experience.
- WP Database Backup – is an invaluable plugin that all bloggers should be using. Too many novice bloggers learn the hard way that consistently backing up their blog can reroute some future headaches. Don’t lose your blog’s data, install this plugin!
These are just a few plugins that you can use to quickly and easily expand the functionality of your blog and get you started in the right direction. Part 3 of the series will cover the basics of how to use WordPress such as creating your first blog post, uploading images and videos and more.
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